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Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee launched a fierce assault today on the truthfulness of the Oklahoma law professor whose accusations of sexual harassment have threatened the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas.

In the second day of hearings whose drama and anger have riveted national attention, the committee continued to evaluate the sharply contrasting accounts offered by Judge Thomas and Anita F. Hill. And once again the televised hearings, marked by Judge Thomas's expressions of disgust, produced powerful testimony about sexual and racial issues.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, in detailed questioning of Judge Thomas, used the morning session to suggest that Professor Hill, who teaches at the University of Oklahoma, concocted her story with details borrowed from a sexual-harassment case in Federal Court and from "The Exorcist," the 1971 novel about satanic possession. Contradictory Statements

In the afternoon, another Republican, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, accused Professor Hill of perjuring herself in testimony Friday by giving the committee contradictory statements about whether she had been told by a Senate staff member last month that her account of sexual harassment would force Judge Thomas to withdraw his nomination.

Judge Thomas, 43 years old, who once again accused the committee of conducting a "high-tech lynching," raised another sensitive racial issue today by saying the accusations of sexual misconduct against him played "into the most bigoted, racist stereotypes that any black man will face" and had irreparably damaged his reputation.

In one of the thematic answers that have marked his testimony in the two days of hearings, Judge Thomas recalled the tradition in American society of bigoted "language about the sexual prowess of black men, language about the sex organs of black men and the sizes, et cetera."

"That kind of language has been used about black men as long as I've been on the face of this earth, and these are charges that play into racist, bigoted stereotypes, and these are the kind of charges that are impossible to wash off," he said. More Witnessess

While most of the day belonged to Judge Thomas, the committee is scheduled to call two panels of witnesses on Sunday. One panel is expected to corroborate the testimony of Professor Hill, who on Friday recounted for the committee instances when Judge Thomas talked to her luridly about sex and pressured her to date him from 1981 to 1983. The other panel will be made up of character witnesses for Judge Thomas.

In an anguished final statement today, Judge Thomas told the committee that he had "died a thousand deaths," gone sleepless and lost 15 pounds in the two weeks since the allegations surfaced, but that he had no intention of quitting.

"The day I received the phone call last Saturday night, about 7:30, and was told that this was going to be in the press I died," he said, forcing back tears. "The person you knew, whether you voted for me or against me, died."

He added: "This person, if asked by George Bush today, would he want to be nominated would refuse flatly, and would advise any friend of his to refuse. It's just not worth it."

As President Bush spent the day at Camp David, Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, issued a statement saying the Administration believed Judge Thomas would be confirmed. "Judge Thomas has once again demonstrated the qualities of determination, sensitivity and leadership that make him an outstanding nominee for the Supreme Court."

The hearings, which have turned into a contest over the credibility of two formidable witnesses, today took on the tone of a criminal trial as Senator Hatch, who is known in the Senate for his debating skills, hinted that Professor Hill was in collusion with liberal interest groups that had hired "slick lawyers -- the worst kind" to cook up schemes to tear at Judge Thomas's credibility. Professor Hill's allegations were "so graphic and so crude and and so outrageous," he said, that anyone who would actually behave that way was "not a person" but a "psychopathic sex fiend or pervert."

Asked if he agreed, Judge Thomas replied, "I would certainly not approach anyone I was attempting to date with this kind of grotesque language." Public Outcry

These exchanges marked the second day of hearings called to deal with the charges that disrupted the planned Senate vote on Judge Thomas's confirmation last Tuesday. The 14 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, all of whom are male, were forced by a public outcry and unease among other Senators to investigate charges from Professor Hill that had been dismissed earlier by the committee.

Professor Hill's compelling account seriously damaged Judge Thomas's essential wedge of support among the Democratic majority in the Senate, and today's effort by Republicans on the committee to discredit Professor Hill could represent Judge Thomas's best chance of salvaging his nomination.

The former chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and now a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, has also fought for his own cause by strongly denouncing both the confirmation process and the motives of Professor Hill and her supporters in liberal public-interest and legal groups.

"I think this whole affair is sick," Judge Thomas said of the hearings today. With an expression of disgust, he said, "I would have preferred an assassin's bullet to this kind of living hell that they have put me and my family through." Two-Stage Strategy

The attempt today by Republicans to discredit Professor Hill appeared to be part of a two-stage strategy. On Friday, they sought to explain Professor Hill's motivation by trying to show her as a spurned woman who wanted to destroy Judge Thomas. Today, with his questions, Senator Hatch, suggested that Professor Hill with the possible collusion of interest groups, was manufacturing charges.

In her testimony Friday, the 35-year-old Professor Hill said that Judge Thomas made references to her about a movie actor called "Long Dong Silver." Today, Senator Hatch asked Judge Thomas, "How could this quiet, retiring women know something like 'Long Dong Silver?' Did you tell her?"

"No," Judge Thomas replied. "I don't know how she knows."

Senator Hatch then advanced his own theory. Apologizing for the language, he read from a Federal District Court case, Carter v. Sedgwick County, Kan., in which the plaintiff accused the defendant of presenting her "with a picture of 'Long Dong Silver,' -- a photo of a black male with an elongated penis."

"I'm sure it's available there at the law school in Oklahoma," Senator Hatch said. "And it's a sexual harassment case."

Waving a copy of "The Exorcist" before Judge Thomas, Senator Hatch then recounted what Professor Hill had testified was the "oddest episode," when, she said, the nominee asked her, "Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?"

With a disgusted look, Senator Hatch read from the novel: " 'Oh Burke,' sighed Sharon. In a guarded tone, she described an encounter between the Senator and the director. Dennings had remarked to him in passing, said Sharon, that there appeared to be an alien pubic hair floating around in my gin.' "

Senator Hatch said it was puzzling that Professor Hill never told investigators of "anything about 'Long Dong Silver' or pubic hair," and only brought out those details when asked Friday by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Delaware Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to provide details of Judge Thomas's alleged unwanted sexual behavior toward her.

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Late in the day, Judge Thomas endorsed the view that the harassment allegations were concocted.

"I believe that someone, some group, I don't care who it was, in combination, came up with this story and used this process to destroy me."

When Mr. Biden sought to discern whether Mr. Thomas thought Ms. Hill herself made up the story or whether interest groups got her to say it, using her as a "willing vessel," Mr. Thomas replied: "Those distinctions are irrelevant to me. The story is false, the story is here, and the story was meant to harm me."

In another line of questioning by Senator Biden, Judge Thomas said that on occasion he had driven Professor Hill home and gone into her apartment.

"Can you give us any sense of how often it happened that you would go in and have a Coke or a beer afterwards?" Senator Biden asked.

"Oh, it couldn't have been any more than maybe twice, three times, nothing -- it was no -- it was nothing major."

In view of their diametrically opposed stories, some senators have suggested privately that both Ms. Hill and Judge Thomas be given polygraph tests, a proposal that civil liberties groups -- which customarily have opposed their use -- seemed willing to embrace.

During her testimony Friday, Professor Hill was asked whether she would submit to one and she said she would. Today, after Senator Paul Simon, Democrat of Illinois, raised the subject again, a member of Professor Hill's legal team reaffirmed that the offer stood. Judge Thomas has not been asked publicly whether he would agree to a polygraph.

Professor Hill did not attend today's hearing. Emma Coleman Jordan, a Georgetown University professor who is a legal consultant to Professor Hill, said: "She's resting comfortably with family and friends. She's doing leisurely things like watching baseball. It's a period for her to restore herself for the process and keep an even keel like you saw her display yesterday. She's recharging her batteries."

In the course of the hearing, the themes of the partisan argument over Judge Thomas have emerged clearly. The Republicans insist that Senate Democrats, unable to trip up the judge in earlier hearings, hoped the charge of sexual misbehavior would bring him down without a vote. When that failed, in the Republican view, the majority, aided by interest groups and the press, began piling on ever more lurid, manufactured details. The Democratic Argument

The Democratic argument is that the committee, having first undervalued the importance of the sexual harassment question, must now explore it fully. As for Professor Hill's credibility, they argue that a woman with her accomplishments and bright future would never come forward with such a story unless it really happened and she was acting out of a sense of social duty.

Most of the questioning Friday and Saturday involved efforts to bolster or deflate these main arguments.

Today's hearing was marked by the emergence of Senator Hatch as the main Republican in charge of saving the Thomas nomination and by a much sharper tone from Senator Specter, who on Friday had treated Professor Hill with kid gloves.

Mr. Specter's charges that Ms. Hill perjured herself in testimony to the committee stemmed from questions he asked her on Friday about a conversation she had in early September with a Senate staff member that involved a discussion about the impact her testimony might have on Judge Thomas's confirmation prospects.

Mr. Specter's accusation appeared to be aimed at undercutting Professor Hill's credibility as a witness and suggested that she was encouraged by opponents of Judge Thomas into making charges that could damage his nomination.

Professor Hill had the conversation with James J. Brudney, an aide to Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, Democrat of Ohio, who eventually voted against the nomination. Mr. Brudney is a lawyer on the staff of the labor subcommittee of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. Senator Metzenbaum is chairman of the subcommittee.

An Oct. 9 article in USA Today, which apparently focused on this conversation, reported that Senate staffer members had told Ms. Hill that if she came forward with her allegations they would be the instrument that "quietly and behind the scenes" would force him to withdraw. 'Going Away'

Mr. Specter asked Professor Hill on Friday morning whether the conversation included "any suggestion, that just the charges themselves, in writing would result in Judge Thomas withdrawing, going away?"

Professor Hill answered, "No, no. I don't recall that at all, no."

But on Friday afternoon, Mr. Specter returned to the issue, asking Ms. Hill whether "Mr. Brudney said to you that the nominee might not wish to continue the process if you came forward with a statement on the factors which you've testified about?"

"Well, I'm not sure that's exactly what he said," Professor Hill replied. "I think what he said was, depending on the investigation, whether the Senate went into closed session and so forth, it might be that he would not wish to continue the process."

Mr. Specter went on. "So Mr. Brudney did tell you that Judge Thomas might not wish to continue to go forward with his nomination if you came forward?"

"Yes," she said. Committee's Performance

After a day of questioning in which Judge Thomas, and some Senators themselves, bitterly attacked the committee's performance, Senator Biden offered a long, impassioned defense.

"I don't want to be a judge," Senator Biden said. "I hate this job. But all of my colleagues here are telling everybody how awful the process is. Let me be completely blunt about it: It's like democracy. It's a lousy form of government, except no one's figured out another way."

Defending the committee's initial decision to respect Professor Hill's request that her allegations not be made public, Senate Biden added: "There's been more nominees sent up here with the last two Administrations that have drug problems that I've never even told these folks about, because it happened 10, 20, 30 years ago. So I take the heat, and I'll take the responsibility, and I'll continue to do it as long as I'm chairman."

When Judge Thomas was asked whether there were lessons from his ordeal that he might carry onto the Supreme Court should he be confirmed, he touched on two hot spots in the political debate over the direction of the Court -- the rights of the accused, and the extent of any Constitutional right to privacy.

The hearings have made him more sensitive to "our rights being protected, what rights we have as citizens of this country, what Constitutional rights, what -- what is our relationship with our government," he said.

A version of this article appears in print on October 13, 1991, on Page 1001001 of the National edition with the headline: THE THOMAS NOMINATION; THOMAS BACKERS ATTACK HILL; JUDGE, VOWING HE WON'T QUIT, SAYS HE IS VICTIM OF RACE STIGMA. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe